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Alexandra Malouf

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“Red Cedar to The Gardener”

An image of a poem. It reads: You've fed me water from a tube, cut Maisie’s name into my coat, and buried your cats between my roots. I swallowed them the way I swallow fungi and toxins, your water— it is all too much. But I devour every gift, and if I could speak your language, I couldn’t say to you I never wanted to be fed. Not while I guzzle your every breath. In the loam, I crawl​ comfortably blind, my clawed feet twining with sisters, trading sugar for minerals. I hear everything: tirade of wind, toothed machines, wires buzzing–– the silence of soil. I love the quiet, feeling my way around stones, dipping in and out of the water line. As root rot creeps into me, my flat fingers turn umber and drop dry at your feet. You hear none of it. How should you when you hardly hear your own body speaking? You shovel and groan, knead your supple boughs, or plant yourself against my skin and prattle like a tireless brook, or look for God in your bark pages. Many days, our shadows have melded like clouds,​ growing long over the grass. If I could speak, I’d tell you there is nothing sweeter than to live on this earth sipping water with you beneath my curved arms, slender crook-staffs herding sun.

“Red Cedar to The Gardener,” Poetry Wales, Vol. 59.3 (Spring), March 2024.

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